Review of The Golden Compass (2007) by Noah L — 31 Jul 2011

Talking animals, warrior polar bears, magic compasses, clearly supporting atheism, and 2 hours of complete special effects...... what could go wrong, almost everything. In another universe, there is a world far different then our own where a place called the Magisterium plans to take over everything and everyone.

In this world people are trusted with a Deamon, a spiritual talking animal that is your trusted partner and whatever injuries happens to your Daemon happens to you. In a college, a young girl named Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) has a daemon named Pan (voice of Freddie Highmore) and a best friend named Roger (Ben Walker).

When Roger is taken by people called Gobblers to a place where children are experimented on, Lyra is then taken in by a mysterious woman who seems to have eveyone scared, when the woman turns out to be named Mrs.

Coutler (Nicole Kidman) she seems to grow a liking of Lyra and lets her live with her and work with her. When Lyra discover shes in charge of the people who took Roger, she runs away and a group of Gyptians take her in.

She begins a long ourney to save her friend, which will end with the truth of her familys history. The plot of the film is probably one of the most ridiculous and stupid stories I have seen in a long time, I don't care if it is based off a book it is still stupid to me, it clearly also is trying to support atheism, for some people that may be fine but as a Catholic I felt insulted when they were comparing the evil Magisterium to the Catholic church which does nothing but try and help people, at least in my opinion I feel this way.

The story also is just a ripoff of classic stpries like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and even my personal favorite Harry Potter. The acting wasn't good either in my opinion, although Nicole Kidman plays a interesting villain, the rest of the cast just seemed to be secretly reading a script during their scenes, espically the cowboy guy, I mean WTF? Roger Ebert thought this film was perfect, and much deeper than the Harry Potter and Narnia films, I find this very ignmorant seeing as its 2 hours long and Narnia and Harry Potter films have explored the worlds for many films and even the first films of each of those franchises made a little sense and kids could understand this, im an adult and I might have to watch it twice to understand all the crap they throw at me in this.

But even through all that, I will admit the effects are breathtaking, they did deserve the Best Effects Oscar, but I still wish Transformers had won it, but the effects in the film are truly the best thing about it, even the Directors said that in a statement.

Overall I disliked the film, but it had amazing effects and Nicole Kidman was a very good villain.